


in death as in life

by miss_echidna



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, every nat fic gets 10 bonus points for every mention of something from comics canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 13:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17447444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_echidna/pseuds/miss_echidna
Summary: The first time she meets him, he is introduced as Comrade Winter Soldier, and he asks who she is. Perhaps that's where it starts.A study of Natasha through the years.





	in death as in life

**Author's Note:**

> this began with the concept of natasha, freshly defected, struggling to make choices for herself outside of the parameters of a mission. then it grew into the character study for her that i'd always wanted to write.

The first time she meets him, he is introduced as Comrade Winter Soldier, and he asks who she is. 

Perhaps that's where it starts. 

.

 

He's a myth, something the girls used to whisper about before they got shipped to different departments or taken away in between sleep-silent breaths. Yelena used to always whisper, heads tucked beneath their stone cold blankets, that he could hear through walls and take out a mark with his eyes closed. Yelena was always one for stories, always caught up in the romance of things, in aestheticism despite impracticality, but Natalia always humoured her nonetheless. 

Yelena is taken when they're sixteen. 

Natalia wakes up slowly, languid, like sleeping off a drug. When the Madame comes to rouse her properly, her commands for the girls to rise are drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in her ears. As the Madame approaches, her demands become clearer and as the words make sense in her head, Natalia follows the command easily. She gets up. Dresses.

For Yelena, she thinks, she will make it to the end of the program. She will meet the Winter Soldier, even, ask him to shoot with his eyes closed. She will listen to every one of the Madame's instructions. Eat when she is told. Train when she is told. Snap a girl's neck at the click of a finger. 

It's not hard, listening to somebody else, she thinks, not having to make any decision that sounds too hard. She doesn't know why everybody doesn't try it. 

 

.

 

When it's just her and one other girl left in the Room, Natalia has her in a chokehold, one muscle's twitch away from ending her first life. Madame B inclines her head slightly. Without thinking, Natalia breathes out, lets every last gasp of air take its leave of her, and then twists her hands.

 

. 

 

Ivan takes her by the shoulder. "Stand up straight, Natalia. You are meeting a good comrade today." 

She straightens her back, and pushes her shoulders down. She doesn't wonder who it might be. There has been talk of the Winter Soldier visiting for months. 

When he arrives, he is flanked by six heavily armed operatives. She doesn't let her shock show, but curiosity eats away at her, until they draw closer and she can see, despite their best efforts to keep it concealed, how acrid fear-sweat drips down their necks and onto their rifles. 

He stops in front of her, roughly her age, she thinks, if not a few years wiser, and is introduced as the Winter Soldier. She thinks of Yelena, how she would have loved to be here to confirm all of her ghost stories, how she might have hidden behind her sheet of blonde hair in embarrassment. 

The Soldier asks who she is. Not, what is your name. 

She barely knows how to reply. 

He is here to train her, he says. To break her, is left unsaid. When they settle themselves onto the training mats for the first time, she swallows her discomfort at the way he jarred her with his questioning, and looks up at him. 

"Tell me what to do," she says easily, planting each foot a hip's width apart, hands raised into fists. 

When he smiles, it betrays no warmth, only the cold of his white teeth. "Hit me."

She obliges willingly. In the first month, she lands only five solid hits on him; the others are mere brushes, feather-light touches of skin on skin, nothing that would leave a bruise in the same way his left on her. She must deserve them, she thinks, for struggling this much to carry out orders. 

In any case, she pushes herself to analyse his weaknesses - he may be the Winter Soldier, but they're there, they exist, she knows. She just has to find them. In the meantime, he corrects her, criticises her, and praises her. When she executes a move well that he taught her, he smiles at her, calls her _vdova_ affectionately, and - she thinks quietly, when she is alone - looks at her with pride. 

Afterwards, he tends her wounds, wrapping her injuries. When she hisses at a sprain in her wrist, she immediately burns her gaze into the floor for being so transparent. 

He takes her wrist gently in his, kneeling in front of her. "This will worsen if we don't put ice on it," he says, mentioning nothing of her embarrassment. She doesn't have to tell him that she knows, that she has grown used to tending her wounds in private, and that having him with her upsets her careful facade. 

She nods. He sets her wrist down, not ungently, and turns away to leave the room in search of ice. 

Natalia cradles her wrist and lets her eyes water for only a moment before she blinks. She stuffs any soft thought for the Soldier down where she'll never think of it again. 

 

.

There’s a tube in her arm. There are electrodes on her scalp. The doctor injects something into her arm. She begins to scream.

 

.

 

“Where would you go?” he asks. They’re in a blindspot, beneath a camera in a forgotten corridor, stealing a moment together, waiting to be caught. “Where would you go, if you got out?”

“When I get out,” she corrects. Then, “Somewhere with a lake.”

“A lake?” He’s teasing her.

She shoves him away, playing along. “Yes, a lake,” she says, primly. “With ducks. And I’ll throw bread at them.”

They smile, and then a tear escapes from her eye.

Then he’s taken away from her, and the wipe is clean.

 

.

 

The mark is some faceless defector, just like the others, except this one is still trying to live his powerful life in Russia. Stupid, she thinks, probably trying to effect change from within, one of these hard-headed, idealist types. 

She wasn't given much intel to work with: both a credit to her skill and an insult to her discretion, but what she does know is that Dmitri Ivanovich likes redheads. It's a breath of fresh air, almost, wearing her natural curls around her face, and a privilege, too, not having to pluck out a weave after this is all over. 

When she steps out of the limousine, a brilliant smile plastered on her face for the benefit of the rush of people outside the gala hall, a sharp intake of breath over the comm catches her off-guard . 

"Natalia," the Soldier breathes. His tone is almost reverent, she can hear the tremors she gives him. 

She turns over her shoulder and glances up at the line of rooftops behind her. She glides her hands down the red silk of her dress to smooth it flat. "Do you like it?"

He's quiet except for a hum of approval, which she knows to take as a compliment. He never flirts with her over the comm, choosing instead to look her in the eye when he tells her she's beautiful. Their new relationship - tentative and volatile - is, no matter it's quiet intensity, still new. Their partnership, however, is a well oiled machine. 

In the wake of his quiet response, Natalia picks her way up the stairs and into the hall, craning her neck over the crowd to find her target. She spots him, predictably, nursing something alcoholic at the bar. 

She sidles up him, sliding onto the vacant stool to his left, and orders herself a cocktail at the bartender's discretion. The mark looks over to her and double-takes. She grins. 

"What's your name?" he says. Not who are you - a difference that she notes with care. 

She thanks the bartender for her drink and pulls it closer to her. With her other hand she gathers her hair in her palm and pulls it over her shoulder, acutely aware that his eyes won't be drifting away any time soon. "Elena Belikova," she says, looking at him briefly, then cocks her head, glancing around. _Make him nervous. Make him want your attention._

He perks up when he catches on to her disinterest, and has another go at his whisky. He takes her hand assertively under his own, and then pulls it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. If she wasn't the woman she was, if she wasn't about to murder him anyway, she'd snap his wrists for touching her. 

She giggles in delight. "And your name might be?"

"Dmitri Ivanovich."

This part of the conversation she hates, so she puts herself on autopilot and drinks her cocktail and smiles when she thinks of the Soldier waiting for her when the mission is over. It's the best part of the mission, seeing the look in his eyes when she stands in front of him in this dress, when he calls her beautiful. 

First, however, she has to get herself out of this damned gala hall with the mark, or else the night will never end. 

"Do you feel like," she interrupts, placing her hand on his, "getting out of here?"

She studies his face, and knows the answer is a resounding 'yes' before it even leaves his mouth. She curls her hand around his and slips off the barstool, leading the way out to a back alley before letting him put his hands on her. 

"Natalia." The Soldier's voice crackles to life in her ear. She is grateful for the distraction and chooses to focus on his voice instead of Ivanovich's wandering paws. "I'm coming down." 

After what feels like too long, Natalia decides that Dmitri has had enough of her body for tonight, and, deciding to make it quick for him, pulls a knife from her thigh, just above where the slit in her dress ends, and runs it through him. 

He falls to the ground, as sickening in death as he was in life, just as the Soldier appears at the mouth of the alley. He takes her in, raking his eyes over her slowly. She shivers under his observation and walks over to him, stepping over the body without care, and pulls him into her kiss with blood-slick hands. 

The brick of the next building bites into her exposed back as she is pushed against it, but she doesn't care, doesn't think, even. She never feels more alive than in the wake of a successful mission. Having the Soldier next to her makes her all the more satisfied. He pulls away, just enough that he can speak, and when he tells her that she's beautiful, even with blood on her face and her hands, she can feel his lips framing the words against her own. 

 

.

 

When she does, finally, land her hit on the Soldier, it's after months of training and missions, of slamming face first into the mats, of bruises in hard to see places. The Winter Soldier will one day work her to her death if she is not careful. And all of her analysing, her honed skills, isn’t even what finally gives her the edge. 

"I am to marry Comrade Shostakov," she parrots absently, repeating, breathlessly, the words that were revealed to her this morning. "For the glory of the Union." Her eyes don’t ever meet his, she is focused only on the fight.

His stance relaxes for the briefest moment, forgetting his orders for her to hit him, and she manages to land a right hook so textbook that she almost cries out with satisfaction. 

He won't stay down for long, she knows, so when she straddles him, taking his waist between her thighs, she tells herself that she does it to finish him off, to affirm her victory, not because when he looks up at her, unsmiling but gentle, with such warmth, she almost wants. 

"I hit you," she says, grinning, betraying the childlike pride she has been instructed to keep buried. "Should we try again?"

"Yes," he says. There is a look behind his eyes that she can't decode, but she is grateful for his incessant desire to see her improve. "Hit me again."

.

 

It's the first decision she's made in twenty years, knocking on his door. The lights in the hallway are dimmed but not off, the same way they are every night, and the cameras will loop innocently enough for two minutes before visuals are restored. 

He opens the door and she pushes on his chest, tough, but not hard, forcing her way in. A strangled "Natalia?" bubbles out of his mouth, out of the mouth of the Winter Soldier, before she silences him altogether, pressing her mouth to his. 

He accepts her, lifting her up to sit her legs around his waist for a better grip, and she smiles into his mouth, all teeth and hunger. This one thing, she wants. She has taken orders for most of her life, so much so she barely knows who she is outside of a kill mission, and doesn't doubt that she will continue to take them long after tonight. He squeezes her waist, making her shiver in delight, and she remembers how when they first met, he asked her not for her name, but who she was. She grants herself this one moment of self-satisfaction, of greed.

And then he pulls back. "Natalia," he says again, his frown pulling his brow together. It takes all of his training not to look at her mouth. Not to lose himself in her. "After tomorrow you will belong to Alexei Shostakov." 

She makes a displeased sound, resting her head on his collarbone. "But tonight," she says, pressing into him again, digging her nails into his back, feeling him squirm, "tonight I am Natalia Romanova, and you will treat me as such."

As night settles into the small hours, she slips out of the bed and dresses as quickly as she can without making a sound. She tells herself that her disobedience, her ability, that night, to give orders as well as she took them, was rooted in her desire to please Alexei, and to serve the Union, her mother. She was, she reasoned, teaching herself how to exploit a mark, how to weaken even the strongest of targets with what she was given. 

As she closes his door gently behind her, hearing the firm click of the lock, she thinks that if she can't even lie to herself, maybe she was never that good at lying at all. 

.

 

His name is Clint Barton. He is the most annoying mark she’s ever had the misfortune to meet in her life.

.

 

In America, Natasha is half of herself. She eats, barely, she gets just enough sleep to not collapse, she trains. SHIELD is full of people she would have, a month ago, been ordered to take out. There are new parameters here, but no new orders. She is left to herself to recuperate. She wonders what there is to recuperate from.

They ask her to see a therapist, to clear her for duty. But she is not ordered to. She sits in a limbo, here. Nobody speaks to her, she doesn’t make herself available to be spoken to. Sometimes she leaves the compound and sits in a park. There’s a lake, and there’s ducks. She’s not sure why she does it. 

.

 

“You can’t keep doing this.”

She’s eating in the cafeteria, trying, and obviously failing, to keep her head down. Now that Clint Barton in the flesh is standing at her table, there’s no point in trying to keep herself inconspicuous. She raises a foot from under the table and pushes at the leg of the chair opposite her in invitation. When he sits, his food tray makes a hollow clat against the tabletop. She winces. “Can’t keep doing what?”

“Can’t keep...” he gestures around with his fork, searching for the word. “Doing this to yourself! You’re free now, you’re not a slave anymore. I don’t mean to be insensitive, but,” he pauses. “When do you stop acting like one?”

She’s torn between throwing her food in his face and leaving. She decides quickly. Pushes herself out of her chair. “Maybe when I stop feeling like one, Barton.”

 

.

 

The mission briefing isn’t unexpected. They can’t keep her in housing indefinitely, and she’s hardly been paying her keep. It’s been months, and she’s made exactly zero contact with anyone that isn’t Barton or Fury. She eats less. She’s not sure what she’s waiting for, exactly. Some other shoe to drop, perhaps? She can’t bring herself to do anything other than what’s necessary to keep her alive. What used to be regular messages from her assigned therapist seem to be dwindling in their regularity. 

Why _now_ is the time that they’ve called her into a mission she doesn't know. 

Barton attends as well--she is told that they’re going to be partnered. Something about that stirs something in her, it pinches the walls of her stomach. She’s not sure why.

The mission itself is infiltration. It’s a get-in-get-out. It doesn’t really need two people, but, really, it’s high time she earned her keep - otherwise, what else is she going to do with herself? Buy a house? A beach house, she thinks. Something near the water?

Barton doesn’t seem to react at all to being told that they’ll be partners. What he does do, is stay behind after the briefing to talk with Fury. _Sure,_ she thinks. _Complain all you like._

 

.

 

It's not hard, listening to somebody else, she thinks, not having to make any decision that sounds too hard. She doesn't know why everybody doesn't try it. 

 

.

 

When she wakes up in Medical, the rails on the sides of her bed are up, and there’s tubes in her arms and in her nose. She hears a beeping, somewhere to her left, begin to speed up frantically, and she starts tearing out tubes, tries to lift her legs over the railing through the fog in her head.

She hears an alert, and people rushing, and people trying to stop her.

She makes it to the corridor outside before she collapses with exhaustion.

 

.

 

Italy is warm, this time of year. Sweltering, almost. She’s looking forward to getting home, putting her shopping down, and sitting beneath her fan until she falls asleep. It’s nice here. She might just stay, when everything is over.

Steve is where he thinks he needs to be, tracking down leads there. It’s frustrating work, for both of them, and she feels like she’s going backwards sometimes. She knew, years and years ago, when she first tried to track him down, that it was impossible--that even though they’re probably the only two people on Earth who could find each other, they’re both missing essential parts of themselves. Even with her and Steve working together, it feels daunting. But she’d never tell him that. She’d never tell him, either, that she’s digging for the Winter Soldier at all.

When she makes it home--finally--her ponytail is sagging and pulls angrily at her scalp. Her key fits into her lock and she steps through the door. One her wall, the alarm panel blinks steadily, already disarmed.

 _Okay,_ she thinks. Puts down her groceries. _I guess I’m dealing with this now._

 

.

 

She never gets formally released from Medical. They say, _We need you here in the morning for tests._ She wants the triggers gone, so she leaves, and plans on coming back.

She ends up in Barton’s temporary quarters, picking through his things, wondering what kind of man leaves an empty yearly planner on his bedside table, but no soap in the bathroom. Barton, she concludes, is something. 

When he finally arrives back, she’s sitting on his bed, hands sitting demurely in her lap. _As if they don’t know what her hands have been trained to do,_ she thinks, and then lets the thought go. She doesn’t make any gesture of greeting. Just looks at him.

"They finally let you out of medical, did they?" he says, facing away from her on the bed, pulling at the ends of his shoelaces and tugging off his shoes. When he's done, he leans his elbows on his knees and lets a deep breath out. He’s not very receptive. She wonders if she should come back later.

She nods anyway. She hasn’t been debriefed, she doesn’t know what she did when she was out. Waiting on Fury to give her a second of his time has made her feel like a child to him. 

_Maybe when I stop feeling like one, Barton,_ she had said. That actually happening feels like a smaller and smaller possibility every day that passes. She can’t really trust him, but she has to do _something._

“I can’t do it on my own,” she admits, her breath coming out strangled. There's something, a movement - her fingers, maybe? She would be shaking if she was anyone else. He softens. She sees him take a glance at her body, the weight she’s lost. He knows she hasn’t gone to her therapist. She’s surviving, barely. Existing would probably be a better word for it. 

Barton turns to face her. “What do you need?” To the point. He won't keep her here for longer than she needs to be. 

She can’t meet his eyes. “I need you to tell me what to do.” A flush creeps up her neck. “Please.”

He takes stock. Is silent for a long time. Does he understand what she is asking? Does he appreciate how it degrades her to have to ask for this? Rarely having the opportunity to make her own decisions, outside of the parameters of a mission, does he realise that being on-mission all the time is the only way she really knows how to survive?

He must come to some conclusion, she thinks. He must realise it’s more trouble than it’s worth to refuse. He stands. "It's four in the morning, Natasha," he says, quietly, gently. He looks her directly in her eyes. "Get some sleep." A command, an order, thinly veiled. 

She nods, and raises her chin, understanding.

.

 

"Eleonora is a silly name," is the first thing he says to her when he finds her. He sits at her kitchen table, hunched in on himself, metal arm benign by his side. She moves to pull her phone out of her bag and sit it on the counter and he flinches. He’s too fresh, she thinks.

She takes a seat. It's been fun in Italy, being Eleonora. Trying to convince herself that she’s there to work and practise the language instead of hunting him down had been a stimulating pastime. That he found _her_ , and not the other way around, only makes her a little bit bitter. "A cover is a cover," she says, raising her hands to fix her ponytail. "It's not sillier than Winter Soldier."

His fingers twitch. She thinks he might up and leave, might consider her a waste of time, but he stays seated, curling his fingers into a fist and then relaxing. She watches as he watches her and tries not to project her feelings onto her read of his face. 

She can usually handle silence. Not now, though. Not with him. “There are people looking for you, soldat,” she says quietly. She does not say, why are you here? Does not command him. 

He frowns. "I've been looking for you."

She can feel it coming. What he needs. What he wants from her. She's not sure she can give it to him. She can't be that person for him. "Why?" she asks, direct, because otherwise they will run themselves in circles until midnight. She’s got work in the morning. 

He wants her to handle him until he is ready. It's a fair enough request, if unfortunate that she must decline. She's not sure she can be trusted with that, with him. How can he trust her to give him orders, when not too long ago she needed orders to be given to her? She barely knows herself what she’s fighting for. She is not the girl he knew in the Red Room anymore. She’s hiding in Italy.

"There's nobody else I can trust with this.” He’s being so honest, she thinks. His shirt is loose on him. How long has it been? “I need someone who knows what it's like, not having the privilege of being able to make decisions." He's getting antsy. As much as they know each other, being here and seeing her in this context is stressing him out. He needs his answer. 

She smiles without warmth. "Trust Steve. Trust literally anybody else." It hurts to say it aloud, to refuse him when she sees herself in what he's going through, when she was the same way all that time ago, but now, here? She'll mess it up. She'll ruin it. Her own agendas will get in the way, and he'll end up worse than when he started. She can't bear that. Not for him. 

"Steve won't do it," he says. He hangs his head slightly. "It's not his way."

Of course. And she sees now why he came to her. She is ruthless one. She'll have no time for the kids gloves with him. She will not coddle or protect. And she knows now, that if she had been treated like that, or had left herself to her own devices when she first defected, there would be no Avenger Black Widow. She would have up and dusted back to Russia within the week. 

"You really want me to do this."

He nods. "I do, _vdova_."

She laughs, throwing her head back. "We have the privilege of real names now, James. Call me by mine." 

"Natalia,” he says. And everything falls into place.

**Author's Note:**

> im randomfatechidna on tumblr and everywhere else that matters :)


End file.
